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Lou started
this trail in 1987 as a merit badge program with a
Boy Scout troop he was working with. They
made the boxes and
installed them throughout the course, 25 in all.
He brought me along this week while he did his chores. By
Delores Cole |
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| We surveyed the boxes on
a very cool and cloudy Thursday in May, 2003. |
Lou uses a golf cart to
get around the trail each week along this 18 hole course. |
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| 21 boxes are located
around the periphery of the course and 4 in the
maintenance area down the road. |
Oh, another you know
what! Lou says that sparrows are the most challenging
critters on this trail. |
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Most of the boxes needed
cleaning
from unwanted residents. |
Records are part of
managing a bluebird trail. |
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| Originally opened in
1925 as a private club, this is said to be Ohio's most
beautiful and challenging
course. |
They are doing a lot of
work to keep the natural areas of the course natural. |
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| I have to say it was
very pretty with all the spring flowering trees. |
This week, Lou is
greasing the poles
in hopes of deferring the raccoons. |
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| And they flowering trees
were everywhere! |
Mostly House Sparrow
this trip around. |
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| This course was designed
by the flamboyant architect, Stanley Thompson. |
Never sure what may fly
out of the
nest box. |
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| The players knew Lou and
asked how the birds were doing. |
And sweet success! The most rewarding part
of this whole ordeal! |
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Some More Sleepy Hollow
Golf Course History...
If Sleepy Hollow seems to be one of those rare public
courses in Ohio that truly has country club conditions,
it's because it once was just that.
And that thank you note should go to a man who is in many
ways the father of public golf in Cleveland. Decades ago
when Ret. Ohio Sen. Howard Metzenbaum was looking to play
a few rounds of golf a couple of times a month, he was
denied membership here. He figured it was because he was
Jewish.
Metzenbaum, who would later become a multi-millionaire and
hero of rank-and-file workmen and their union causes,
didn't turn the other cheek and get his tee-times
elsewhere. He filed a lawsuit against the country club in
the name of his wife, and then set out to get even. The
country club had been built on public land. That was all
he needed to know. Tens of thousands of dollars in legal
fees later, Metzenbaum won his case.
Now everybody can enjoy
these swoops and slides through gentle valleys and ridges
with views of northern Ohio that nearly stretch to the
blue umbrella skies of Lake Erie and the distant towers of
Cleveland on clear days.
There was a nice touch,
too, to the way the course switched ownership. Park
rangers actually came on New Years Eve in 1963 to claim it
for the public. Nobody knows if they busted up a social
gathering when they arrived, but the smart money says that
the local gentry were embroiled in a traditional country
club New Year's Eve party.
The discriminating
country club folded and this challenging 18-hole array
became a public Sleepy Hollow. The country club that
opened in 1925, the roaring 20s, would become a home for
the workingman golfer every day from that night onward.
Source: www.golfohio.com
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